Cato’s “On Farming” (a translated part of his famous treatise “De Agri Cultura”) is of considerable historical interest. This text, or, more precisely, a practical guide to agriculture, depicts the life of a large Italian economy in republican Rome in the 2nd century BC. Cato himself was a landowner and wrote his treatise in the way that a man with a good knowledge of agriculture could write. No wonder his favorite saying was: “Rem tene verba sequentur” – “know the matter, the words will come by themselves.” Cato’s description of the natural estate in “On Farming” shows a pragmatic, almost capitalist approach to farming. In fact, in this chapter, he seeks to give recommendations on the organization of developed commodity production in order to obtain the highest possible monetary income. Therefore, his advice on how to cultivate such an estate – uti quam sollertissimum habeat – is translated from the idea of the involvement of an agricultural estate in developed commodity-money relations: “so that it is as profitable as possible” (8.2). At the beginning of the chapter, it indicates that the owner can sell not only grown products but also firewood and brushwood from a suburban estate. Based on personal experience, he argues that the estate owner should strive to sell rather than buy. Strict frugality is observed when managing a rural villa: money should be treasured and spent sparingly after careful calculations. Cato recommends receiving income not in pursuit of profit but by minimizing unnecessary expenses.
The same views underlie the so-called scale of property profitability as an essential feature of an ideal estate. Cato lists the plots of certain crops in the following order: “If you ask me what would make a farm the first choice, I will say this: varied ground, a prime position and a hundred iugera; then, first the vineyard (or an abundance of wine), second an irrigated kitchen garden, third a willow wood, fourth an olive field, fifth a meadow, sixth a grain-field, seventh a plantation of trees, eighth an orchard, ninth an acorn wood ”(1.7). If, when considering the issue, we proceed from his views on the management of the family economy, it becomes clear that this passage was written not at all in order to show how the house owner can earn more money. This appears to indicate which industries on the estate generate the most savings and avoid unnecessary spending. From this point of view, Cato’s recommendations are ideal: the location of the willow tree immediately after the vineyard and the garden is not accidental, since in this passage a scale of the main and auxiliary industries is given, with the help of which the owner of the estate can collect, preserve and process the crop with the least loss.
Application-specific advice on housekeeping is also abundant in Cato’s text. Further, he gives brief recommendations for the arrangement of a suburban economy. First of all, he recommends cultivating, as in an ideal estate, all sorts of grapes (7.1), although for the owner, who is accustomed to counting every ass, the most profitable is a vineyard where the vines wind through the trees (arbustum). Moreover, in general, one needs to approach this issue reasonably and grow everything that suits (7. 1). The suburban economy should have an orchard where apple trees, several varieties of pears, pomegranates, table varieties of quince (7.3), and several types of fig trees (8.1) grow. Olives are good to have two varieties – for pickling and fresh consumption (7.4) and several types of nuts, including almonds (8.2).
In addition, the presence of the leading agricultural industries provided food for the staff of the estate, the housekeeper, and his city name. Cato explicitly states that the owner will not only easily sell the products and firewood obtained from arbustum in the city, but he will also be able to use them for his own needs. The vineyard produces many wines of the most varied quality, both for the daily rations of workers and the owner. An irrigated vegetable garden, which can bring several bountiful harvests of vegetables per year, serves the same purposes. The olive garden provides the necessary amount of olives and oil in the family’s diet. The meadow is needed for grazing livestock, primarily for oxen and sheep. Without a harvest from a grain field, the daily ration of a slave family is unthinkable. Leaves from the forest are used to feed sheep, from whose milk cheese was prepared, consumed in large quantities by all strata of Roman society. Grapes climbing trees produce the best wines at the lowest cost. Finally, the acorn forest supplies both pig feed and materials for work and crafts. The presence of such a set of industries allowed the owner to save his money significantly.
If there is also a prosperous city, a navigable river, a sea, or a trade route nearby (1.3), then the homeowner has ideal conditions at minimal cost to provide everything necessary, and as soon as the surplus remains, on occasion, it will be possible to sell it profitably. Thus, according to Cato, with such a set of industries and in the order in which they are listed, the ideal estate allows one to lead a zealous and frugal lifestyle in the spirit of the covenants of the ancestors and even receive an income that will be the purest and most faithful. Thus, the idea of frugality for the sake of the development of the family economy and the expansion of property was reflected in Cato’s speeches and deeds and formed the basis of his treatise “De Agri Cultura.”
Background on Author’s Methodology
To reconstruct Cato’s views, first of all, it is necessary to take into account the time of compiling “De Agri Cultura.” There is no consensus on the account in science, although the dominant idea is that the treatise was written in the middle of the 2nd century. BC. (Astin). Following Plutarch, historians distinguish two stages in the life of Cato. In his youth, he was actively involved in the arrangement of estates, and at that time, he had only two sources of income – agriculture and thrift, and at the second stage, rural work gave him a pleasant pastime, but he began to receive income from various commercial and financial transactions, sometimes of dubious nature (Cornell). This testifies to the evolution in the economic worldview of Cato – the attitude towards agriculture as the primary source of income was replaced by the attitude towards it as an occupation with different goals. Thus, the spirit, ideas, character of the treatise correspond not to the time when Cato already considered the countryside a place of rest and entertainment, but to the first stage of Cato’s life, when agriculture was the most important source of income for him. The idea of frugality for the sake of developing the family economy and expanding property was not only reflected in the speeches and deeds of Cato but also formed the basis of his treatise. Therefore, it is no coincidence that only two chapters are devoted to the suburban estate in the treatise. It did not fit well into the economic views of the author.
In chapters 7 and 8, attention is drawn to the terms in which the author describes the estate designated in 7.1 as fundum suburbanus. In chapter 8. 2, he talks about the economy, using the term sub urbe, “under the city.” And just below, he calls ownership not suburban, but urban – fundus urbanus. The fact that Cato considers his estate to be suburban or urban is quite remarkable and indicates the location of this site. Dionysius of Halicarnassus noted that numerous and extensive suburbs adjoined Rome on all sides since the era of the kings. Houses with rural plots wedged into the territory of the city, and it was impossible to determine “to what extent the city stretches and where the suburban area begins from.” Thus, the city and the countryside merged together, and the impression was that the city stretches endlessly (Hollander). This passage expressed the prevailing view of the Romans in the mass consciousness about the situation in the suburban area, which was reflected in the terminology of Cato.
The list of many fruits grown for sale in ripe form, processed or harvested for future use for sale, to which firewood was added at the same time (7.1), shows that the listed products turned out to be goods that can significantly diversify the table of various strata of urban dwellers, as on weekdays, and on holidays, as well as something that could not be done without during family and social celebrations. In the treatise, Cato in chapters 7 and 8 just advised the householder, who already has a medium-sized estate and is familiar with the practice of its processing, how also to cultivate a garden plot directly adjacent to the city or even located on its outskirts, and what to give there preference. After all, a simple set of vegetables on a peasant plot has long been well known to every Roman farmer. All this shows that Cato recommends an ingenious approach to solving the problem of choosing crops cultivated in a suburban garden area to get away from the traditionally narrow range of crops in the peasant economy (Bonner). Therefore, the sollertissimum in Chapter 8. 2 in the context of all of the above should be translated as “most skillfully,” i.e., differently than it was traditionally done in the peasant economy, taking into account new knowledge and opportunities.
Discussion
The treatise was written in a short time immediately after Cato’s return from Greece in 191, but until 187 BC, when denarii began to be minted, which, however, is not mentioned in the treatise. It was then, at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd centuries. BC. in Italy, rural villas of the classical type are spreading, and the question of how to equip them in the best possible way arises before the owners of the estates. In this situation, after the end of the Hannibal War, Cato, having familiarized himself with the advanced agricultural knowledge of the Punians and Greeks and having accumulated rich personal practical experience, established the optimal forms of functioning of his own estates in the shortest possible time. He presented the results of his activities in a treatise intended for contemporaries who, in economic practice, followed the same path and were in dire need of advice of this kind. During this period, Cato still considered it possible to obtain a reasonably high income from agricultural activities. Besides, the ambitious Cato, having published the treatise, also pursued political popularity and fame, which he needed in the early 180s when he was preparing for the elections for the post of censor (Reay). Therefore, the treatise “On Farming” was based, in addition to the author’s own experience, also on the precepts of the ancestors.
In the Late Republic era in ancient Rome, a particular type of rural estate developed – a suburban economy (suburbanum). Its description has come down to us in the treatises of the learned agriculturalists of that time – Cato and Varro. Researchers of the economy of ancient Rome, both domestic and foreign, approaching the classification of the various types of estates that arose at that time, primarily from the standpoint of the marketability of the economy, classify the suburban estates described by the authors mentioned above to one type (Hollander). The main criterion, in this case, is the level of connections with the market and the possibility of obtaining high incomes through the sale of grown products in a nearby city.
Cato speaks of a suburban estate, suburbanum, in only two chapters, 7 and 8, and the middle-sized villa rustica is central. This imbalance does not seem to be accidental. Such little attention paid to the suburban estate by a learned agriculturalist indirectly indicates its minor importance in the economic structure of a noble Roman family (among senators and equestrians) at the beginning of 2 BC (Astin). This was due to the ideas of Roman society’s highest social groups about the priority of mos maiorum in motivating economic activity, about the nature of the prestigious property, and worthy forms of activity (Foxhall). In contrast to a medium-sized estate, the suburban estate had few opportunities to demonstrate the owner’s high status since a large part of it was occupied by a garden where various fruit trees (7.3) and flowers (8.2) grew. Cato wrote his work, the guarantee and personification of the high social status of the Roman elite were located, as a rule, in Italy’s central regions, a medium-sized estate based on the labor of slaves. The suburban estates of the nobility, located under the walls of Rome in the neighborhood with small plots of ordinary citizens and not much different from them in terms of the set of cultivated crops, did not play such a role (Astin). Thus, in the treatise, one can see the contradictory views of Cato during the period of writing the treatise. On the one hand, he already knows how to calculate profit and knows how to get it in the best way. However, on the other hand, he is a bearer of civic values based on the mos maiorum, with an attitude towards land as a status value.
The book of Cato has long served as a rich mine for anyone involved in the economics of the second century BC. The facts reported by “On Farming” are both essential and eloquent. However, no less than the reported facts, the order in which these facts are located tells us about ancient Italy’s economic situation. The composition of Cato’s book allows us to look further and penetrate the country’s economic life more profoundly than it can be done based on the reported data alone. This circumstance is both curious and methodologically critical: the source illuminates the past not only by what it says but also by the way it speaks.
Works Cited
Astin, Alan Edgar. Cato the censor. Oxford University Press, 1978.
Bonner, Stanley. Education in ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny. Vol. 91. Routledge, 2011.
Cornell, Tim. “Cato the Elder and the origins of roman autobiography.” In: A. Powell, Ch. Smith (Eds.), The Lost Memoirs of Augustus (2008): 15-40.
Dalby, A. (1998). Cato on farming-De Agricultura-A modern translation with commentary. Prospect Books.
Foxhall, Lin. “The dependent tenant: land leasing and labour in Italy and Greece.” The Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 97-114.
Hollander, David B. Farmers, and agriculture in the Roman economy. Routledge, 2018.
Reay, Brendon. “Agriculture, Writing, and Cato’s Aristocratic Self-Fashioning.” Classical Antiquity 24.2 (2005): 331-361.